As I have made my way around the coffeelands this year, I have been struck among other things by the vibrant colors I saw in the ripe cherries, brightly-painted infrastructure and hand-lettered signs, among other places. Here are some images of the colores de café in Mesoamerica.
On the Liturgical Calendar, we celebrate the joyous Easter resurrection of Jesus. On this blog, I want to take a moment to celebrate the ways that the Gospel values that Jesus preached in his earthly ministry have been taken up by courageous members of the clergy in the coffeelands.
when my photos were made to look very good by the excellent design firm here in Guatemala that created the CAFE Livelihoods 2009-2010 Yearbook, I started feeling pretty good about myself. Then I went to the Inspired by Coffee photo exhibit at Anacafé, and got a big dose of humility.
The coffee harvest is just…irresistible. My eyes (and camera) are invariably drawn to the bright red of the coffee cherries, which make their way in just a few hours’ time from the trees where they are picked to a sticky rest in the fermentation tank — the truimphant conclusion of many months of patient maturation. Here are a few images documenting the last day in the life of some very special coffee cherries from Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.
On my recent visit to Olopa here in Guatemala, I had the pleasure of spending some time with two fantastic people — Don Bernardino and Doña Francisca. During our visit, Don Bernardino was very expressive in conversation, using his hands to emphasize a point, demonstrate the physical quality of his coffee, dig into his worm […]
I get paid – among other things – to travel to remote regions of the coffeelands to meet with farmers hear about their aspirations for their coffee and their families and do what I can to help them along the way. Every one of these visits is memorable in its way. But every once in a while, I get to visit places that are even more memorable than usual, like Tzampetey.
I visited a dry mill in Oaxaca last week just as the harvest is getting into high gear. The mill was primed and ready, but almost totally empty. And spotless. Unlike all my past visits to dry mills during the peak of the post-harvest period, there was no activity at all. No people. No coffee. No roar of elevators or sorters to shout over. Perhaps that is why I was able to appreciate lots of beautiful little geometric details that have escaped my notice on previous visits.
Payback time. Earlier this week I confessed to taking some pleasure in seeing a few national champion baristas roll up their sleeves in Sustainable Harvest’s Seed-to-Cup Barista Challenge, and get humbled in the process. Then, I got mine — on a visit with an association of smallholder farmers in Guatemala on Tuesday, something went terribly wrong after I carried a sack of freshly picked coffee cherries to the wet mill.
What Santa really needs for Christmas — espresso!
